"Progress results only from
the fact that there are some men and women who refuse to believe
that what they know to be right cannot be done."
Russell Davenport

With the US presidential campaign
preliminaries beginning in Republican parties, it is useful to
recall one of the most innovative of campaign strategists, Russell
Davenport, the spirit behind those chanting "We want Willkie"
at the 1940 Republican convention in Philadelphia.

Russell Davenport was one of the
founders of the early 1939 World Citizens' Association along
with Quincy Wright, professor of international law at the University
of Chicago. Davenport was a resolute opponent of the isolationist
movement then strong in the Republican Party and among some Democrats
as well. As he wrote "There come times in history of every
people when destiny knocks on their door with an iron insistence the
shape of things to come depends on us: our moral decisions, our
wisdom, our vision and our will."

However, it was less because of his
role in the world citizens' movement than because he was the
editor of Fortune in Henry Luce's publishing empire that early
supporters of Wendell Willkie brought the two men together in
the summer of 1939 at a brainstorming session that Fortune held
once a month with industrialists, bankers, labor union leaders,
economists, and sociologists.

Willkie had been a Democrat most
of his adult life and was considered as "a wild card"
among the Republican elite. Moreover, he had never run for a
political office and to start out by wanting to run for President
struck some, especially Republican senators and governors, as
premature. Willkie was disliked by Democrats as a renegade and
by Republicans as an interloper. Willkie was a lawyer for large
corporations of the sort that advertised in Fortune and had defended
the big electric-generating companies against government regulations.
Since the TVA and its state-sponsored creation of energy was
one of the major projects of FDR's New Deal, Wendell Willkie
became an opponent of Roosevelt's policies but without any base
among Republicans whom he had joined only at the end of FDR's
first term.

Russell Davenport was one of the
fellow Yale graduates that Henry Luce had brought first to Time,
then Life and Fortune. Davenport was more of a writer and idea
person who could visualize what others should write rather than
an editor. He was considered disorganized by his fellow editors
and nearly never ready for a deadline. As a fellow Luce editor
John Jessup wrote in the preface of The Dignity of Man, a posthumous
book of Davenport's unfinished writings "Davenport was in
important ways the best managing editor Fortune ever had; in
unimportant, the worst. As an executive, he was a fountain of
anarchy, indecision, and disorder. He inherited a small staff
of able and somewhat pampered writers and researchers who were
used to a good deal of autonomy in fulfilling their assignments.
Davenport took this machine apart and put it together again his
editorial antennae, so readily agitated by remote inscrutabilities,
often led him to change signals in mid-story, and in view of
his noon-to-midnight working habits, there was not always time
or occasion for him to make the signals clear to his staff. In
the resulting crises he sometimes rewrote whole stories himself
overnight, offending the writers and researchers who considered
themselves responsible." Davenport had imagination, and
Fortune under his editorship produced a number of in depth reports
on world economic conditions. Davenport also edited and published
in the April 1940 issue Wendell Willkie's campaign credo "
We, the People."

Davenport put his energy, writing
skills, and contacts in the publishing world at the service of
Wendell Willkie in 1940. The political amateurs, but with access
to considerable money from publishing and other business sources
finally overwhelmed the Republican political establishment who
were divided in their support between Robert Taft, Senator from
Ohio, and Thomas Dewey, Governor of New York. The political professionals
did not see the Willkie train moving down the tracks until too
late.

In the 1930s and 1940s, primary elections
for party candidates had not taken on the role that they have
today, and party conventions were times of political deals in
"smoke-filled rooms." The Willkie campaign, with Davenport
as "personal representative" because he needed a title
- in reality chief speech writer - filled the visitors' galleries
and balcony with Willkie supporters who were not delegates. They
took up the chant "We want Willkie" at every occasion
with growing force. Davenport, at 39, was the oldest among the
"young guard" that was Willkie's inner circle. The
Floor Manager was Harold Stassen, then the 32 year-old Governor
of Minnesota. On the sixth ballot, Willkie was nominated for
President and began his campaign just as World War II broke out
with the German attack on Norway and France.

Davenport took leave from Fortune
to be chief writer on the campaign train that crossed the USA
several times, bringing Willkie to many towns. Davenport wrote
speeches which attacked FDR's internal policies while supporting
his international role in helping England under Nazi attack.
Yet after the campaign, Willkie said realistically " In
moments of oratory in campaigns, we all expand a little bit."
Franklin Roosevelt won easily, but Willkie received more votes
than had Republicans in the two earlier presidential contests
of FDR.

Willkie's style and the fine prose
with which Davenport had filled Willkie's speeches had impressed
Roosevelt and his circle, in particular his "right hand
man" Harry Hopkins who was a personal friend of Davenport.
In 1942, Roosevelt decided to send Wendell Willkie on a round-the-world
tour to meet allied leaders to show that the USA was united on
world policy across the political party divisions. Thus Willkie
began a series of meetings with world leaders, in particular
the new Soviet partner, Joseph Stalin, as well as going to Africa,
the Middle East and China. On his return, Willkie had notes and
impressions that Russell Davenport pulled together along with
Gardner Cowles Jr. a publisher, and Joseph Barnes, reporter and
later foreign editor of the New York Herald Tribune, who had
been on the trip. Davenport suggested "One World" as
the title.

Russell Davenport was deeply influenced
by the German theosophical writer Rudolf Steiner who believed
in a "world spirit" much on the lines of the more recent
James Lovelock's Gaia (1). The "world spirit" at work
was what Davenport called "destiny", and destiny called
upon everyone to move, to respond to the "spirit of the
times". As Steiner had written "Man is not a being
who stands still; he is a being in the process of becoming. The
more he enables himself to become, the more he fulfils his true
mission." For Davenport, the "world spirit" was
calling to a realization of "One World". Steiner had
stressed that internationalism springs from a love which radiates
out to all peoples and races, in order that the light received
from them may be kindled in the deeds, conceptions and creations
of one's own people. "Each individual nation must so find
its place in the great chorus of the peoples of the earth that
it contributes to the full understanding which can alone unite
them all in real and mutual knowledge." As Davenport wrote
in a less-Germanic style "the inner knowledge that American
policy cannot be merely national, but must, to be valid, relate
itself to humanity as a whole." He expressed his hopes for
a positive American role in his lines My Country "My country
will be generous to the bold, to those who do not fear the dangerous
thrust of progress toward the far and unforetold, but know that
like a promise, freedom must lie forward of the darkness, not
behind and know the Brothers in their heart, and trust this light
at last to liberate mankind."

Willkie's One World (2) became a
best-seller and the term "one world" became part of
the everyday vocabulary. World citizens were called "one
worlders", and the isolationist wing of the Republican Party
became largely powerless. Unfortunately, Wendell Willie did not
live long after the publication of his book. He died in the autumn
of 1944 at the age of 52. Davenport's writing skills and imagination
were also largely absent from the organized world citizens' movement
which began structuring itself at the end of World War II and
the start of the Cold War. His health declined, and most of his
writing projects were left unfinished. The more developed were
published as The Dignity of Man after his death in 1954 at the
age of 53. A little like "We want Willkie", Davenport's
contribution to cosmopolitan thinking has faded from the scene,
his skill with words often replaced by more academic styles.
Yet destiny keeps knocking, and the shape of things to come still
depends on our moral decisions, our wisdom and our wills.

(1) J.E. Lovelock. Gaia: A New Look
at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1979)
(2) Wendell Willkie.One World (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1943)